Assessment

     One of the things I was nervous about coming into student teaching was not knowing the what students know. In other words, I did not know what skills or knowledge that say a sophomore had compared to a freshman. What I was not expecting was for them not to know how to actively read or read with a purpose. I guess I forgot that at that age, I did not know how to do that either. So, I had to think back on how I learned to read complex text and how to apply that for the assignments I was given. I had to do this before I assessed them on a text, since doing it before they learned this skill seemed unfair to me. I wish I had the assignment template beforehand, but for now, it is a great resource for reference in teaching future lessons on reading rhetorically. And at least I have it now to continue helping me out. Anyway, these reading skills do not come naturally to most, so it is important to have a resource like this to continue developing reading skills not only for school life but for afterward. The complex text never goes away, and by developing these skills you can help students read other complex and difficult texts. When it comes to assessing these new skills, the handout, "Assess and Evaluating Students' Learning", gives multiple ways to assess and get data from these assessments that are not "correct answer" tests. This is really important to me since I personally do not like giving multiple choice tests, since these tests only give me raw data, and not how the student thinks about these problems or questions. That is where the other assessments that were given help. Also, there are usually peers involved, which helps tremendously when learning about literature. The chapter itself is extremely valuable, I plan to keep it when planning not only the unit for this class but for future use in my classroom.